Project Mercury began on October 7,1958 one year and three days after Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1.
Mercury was the United States first manned space program. The program made up of six manned flights from
1961 to 1963. The objectives were : 1) to otbit a manned spacecraft around the earth. 2) to investigate man's
ability to function in space. 3) to recover both man and spacecraft safely .However ,three weeks after Alan Shepard's
First U.S. human suborbital flight, on May 5,1961 and only 15 minutes, President John F.Kennedy announced the goal of
landing a man on the MOON before the end of the decade.
The Mercury capsule was a tiny one person craft barly large
enough to hold the occupant. The capsule was two meters (6 ft 10 in.)long, 1.9 meters (6 ft 2.5 in.)in diameter,
5.8 meters (19 ft 2 in.) escape tower fastened to a cylinder mounted on top.The blunt end was cover with an ablative heat shield to protect
it against the 3000 degrees heat when entry into the atmosphere. The main conical portion of the spacecraft contained the crew,life support system,
power,and controls system . The cylidrical section housed parachute and landing system. The top most section had antenna for RF transmission.
The first two missions were lifted by the Redstone. The rest of the missions used the Atlas, a lot more powerfull than Redstone.